Businesses selling online to Brazil-based consumers could be forced to store any personal data they collect about those individuals on local servers under proposed new laws under consideration in the country.
According to an automated translation of a report by the Reuters news agency, the federal government in Brazil has …

Most of the data breach incidents analysed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in a three-month period earlier this year concerned errors in the way personal information was disclosed, the watchdog has said.
The ICO said that it had looked at 335 data breach incidents between 1 April and 30 June 2013 and found that in …

A trade mark owner has won the right to stop its mark being adopted as a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) by a rival company.
Del Monte International (DMI) of Monaco had applied to register '.delmonte' as a new gTLD under an expanded system of domains being set up by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers …

China and the US are investing more in technology in a bid to drive innovation than the UK, more than half of respondents to a new survey have said.
According to management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company Accenture which conducted the poll - and published the results this week - 56 per cent of business …

Most UK businesses involved in outsourcing IT are planning to either increase or maintain the current levels to which they outsource, according to a new survey.
A survey of more than 230 of highest spending UK businesses on IT by Whitelane Research revealed that more than a third of those businesses are planning to increase the …

Labelling within electronic programme guides on connected TVs could help viewers to distinguish between regulated and unregulated content, the Government has said in setting out a new communications strategy.
The government has called on industry (52-page/472KB PDF) to develop tools that enable the distinction to be made between …

The number of complaints raised by businesses over the awarding of public sector contracts has more than doubled over the last year, according to new figures.
According to data released by the Cabinet Office following a freedom of information request by Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, business complaints about …

There are at least 40 per cent more companies that make up the UK's "digital economy" than any Government estimates, and those companies tend to be considerably more successful than non-digital companies, researchers have found.
The study [43-page, 6.2MB PDF], commissioned by Google and produced by the National Institute for …

Most IT outages in 2012 occurred during the months of June and July, a technology provider has said.
John Gentry, vice president of marketing at Virtual Instruments, said 60 per cent of IT outages for the year occurred during the two summer months.
Gentry said factors such as IT experts taking holidays, the stress on mobile and …

A new online platform to help facilitate the licensing of copyrighted works in the UK is now being piloted.
The Copyright Hub centralises information on who individuals and businesses need to contact and gain permission from to "copy, adapt, share or distribute" music, text, images, video or other multimedia that is protected by …

Businesses could be wound up if they engage in cyber attacks or fail to prevent staff from engaging in computer hacking or other cyber crimes under new draft laws backed by the European Parliament.
MEPs last week voted to support a new EU Directive on attacks against information systems. The new framework would require member …

The European Parliament has voted through proposed temporary reforms to the EU's emissions trading system (EU ETS), after the Parliament's Environment Committee set stricter conditions for the proposed "backloading" of allowances.
The latest proposed reforms will prevent the European Commission from backloading more than the 900 …

The European Commission has asked mobile telecoms firms and manufacturers of devices to provide details of any agreements they have with Google regarding the use of the technology giant's Android operating system.
A number of Google's rivals have recently complained about agreements between Google and mobile device manufacturers …

Tax authorities and law enforcement agencies are to be able to access information about the owners of UK-registered companies under new rules proposed by the government.
The new rules, announced ahead of this week's G8 summit in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, will see companies required to supply information on their 'beneficial …

Advertisers are responsible for any material they hoover up from social networks to use in their promotions - and that user-submitted content must comply with UK advertising rules.
That's according to the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), which together with the Broadcasting Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP), is …

Providers of public Wi-Fi services could soon display a form of trust mark to indicate their networks prevent access to pornographic content, the UK government has said.
The government said that some major Wi-Fi providers were looking into the possibility of establishing such a trust mark scheme in collaboration with the UK …

Easing restrictions on the maximum height that existing telecoms masts can be increased to will lead to a reduction in the number of masts needed for supporting mobile broadband services, an expert has said.
The Government is consulting on proposals to improve mobile connectivity in England [44-page 306KB PDF]. The plans include …

A lack of consistency over the way Asian regulators approach data privacy issues has led to a slow take-up of cloud services by businesses in the region, an expert has said.
Hong Kong-based outsourcing contracts expert Peter Bullock of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that cloud providers are not offering …

Retailers could be offered the chance to terminate some agreements formed with Penguin over the sale of electronic books as part of the UK publishing company's bid to resolve European Commission concerns about the nature of those agreements.
Penguin has formed an informal agreement with the Commission over its practices in …

There are insufficient data protection safeguards built in to proposed reforms to the EU's insolvency law framework, a privacy watchdog has said.
In a recently issued opinion into the European Commission's draft Insolvency Regulation, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) raised concerns about the mandatory publication …

Organisations "almost always" require individuals' "free, specific, informed and unambiguous 'opt-in' consent" in order to make use of personal data they have previously collected in Big Data projects that involve analysing or predicting the "personal preferences, behaviour and attitudes of individual customers", an EU privacy …

The government has issued guidance that sets out the kind of costs businesses incur that they are legitimately able to claim back through payment surcharging.
Under the Consumer Protection (Payment Surcharges) Regulations, which took effect on 6 April, businesses are prohibited from charging consumers excessive fees for using a …

The UK's data protection watchdog has highlighted concerns it has with a new information-sharing initiative that has begun operating in the health sector in England.
Earlier this week a new Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) was established with the power to require health bodies to hand over "any information" …

Online traders will be able to resolve contractual disputes with consumers based in other EU countries through a new online dispute resolution (ODR) framework after MEPs voted to back the new regime earlier this week.
The European Parliament approved a new ODR Regulation and a new Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Directive …

Brand owners may face a costly battle to fight 'typosquatters' under a new top-level domain regime, an expert has warned.
In 2011 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that oversees the identification of websites, voted to expand the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that are in use …

Officials from justice departments across the EU have been asked to explore to what extent the pseudonymisation of personal data can be used to "calibrate" businesses' obligations to data protection.
Pseudonymisation (such as assigning fake names to people), as opposed to anonymisation (complete stripping of identity), allows …

Standard-essential patent owners should be required to try to settle licensing disputes out of court in a bid to restrict the affects of litigation on market innovation, three prominent economists have said.
In a paper for the Competition Policy International (CPI) think tank, Kai-Uwe Kühn, Howard Shelanski and Fiona Scott …

The UK government is seeking to hear from businesses that would be interested in submitting evidence to help form a new "organisational standard" for cyber security.
The Cyber Security and Resilience Team within the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) has asked businesses to detail initial interest in …

International Data Corporation (IDC) said that the figure included what businesses had spent on telecoms services and that total expenditure on hardware, software and IT services alone had topped $2 trillion on its own. The latter figure represented a 5.9 per cent increase from the total IT expenditure in 2011 and was recorded …

Google has called on the EU's highest court to uphold its right to display links to published "valid legal material" in the face of calls from Spain's data protection authority to remove links on the grounds of privacy.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is due today to stage a hearing on a case in which it has …

A "highly unusual" additional parliamentary hearing on proposed changes to German copyright law is a sign that there is increasing opposition to the publisher-driven plans, an expert has said.
A cross-party sub committee on new media is scheduled to stage a hearing of stakeholders' views on the proposed amendments to the German …

Private sector businesses could obtain "identifiable" information about patients without their consent under a new scheme that will see medical data made commercially accessible, according to information disclosed by the government.
Under plans previously unveiled by the government, a new research body, the Clinical Practice …

The UK's data protection watchdog has fined the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) £150,000 after it deemed its failure to encrypt sensitive personal data stored on DVDs that were lost to be a serious breach of the Data Protection Act.
The nursing and midwifery regulator had arranged for the DVDs, which contained confidential …

The sensitivity of personal information should be determined by the reasons behind why the information is to be processed, the UK's data protection watchdog has said.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) outlined its view in a new paper in which it analysed the European Commission's proposed new EU Data Protection …

US diplomat warns of "trade war" if "right to be forgotten" proposals in Europe are followed through.
The introduction of planned changes to EU data protection laws could herald a trans-Atlantic "trade war", a US diplomat has warned.
John Rodgers, economic Officer in the US Foreign Service, said that "things could really …

Nearly two-thirds of retail banks experienced at least one distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in the past year, according to a new survey.
In a new report, (12-page/941KB PDF) commissioned by Corero Network Security, 64 per cent of 650 IT and IT security experts from 351 banks said a DDoS attack had been carried out on …

A "fragmented" legal framework, the "attitude" of regulators and a naturally cautious approach to security issues are among the reasons why UK businesses have made less use of cloud computing than US counterparts, according to experts.
IT law and cloud computing specialists Charles Park and Christopher Mann of Pinsent Masons …

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has increased its focus on international businesses it suspects of using profit shifting techniques to avoid taxes in the UK, according to figures obtained by Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com.
A freedom of information (FOI) request made by the firm showed that the department's large …

It is "unlikely" that a new licensing system intended to connect offshore wind farms to the national grid will save consumers money, an influential committee of MPs has warned.
In a report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that the offshore transmission operator (OFTO) licensing regime could instead "lead to higher …

An MEP's suggested reforms to EU data protection laws, which are to be put to a vote before the European Parliament, would damage the interests of businesses, an alliance of business groups has said.
In a statement, the Industry Coalition for Data Protection (ICDP) criticised the draft report that Jan-Phillip Albrecht published …

Innovations in mobile and cloud computing, social technology and the use of "big data" present an emerging risk to organisations' IT security, experts have warned.
The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which is an EU advisory body, said that those technologies would increasingly provide the platform for " …

Businesses will not be able to use pre-ticked boxes to gain user consent for the processing of their data under changes proposed by the European Parliament to new EU data protection laws.
In a new report, Jan-Philipp Albrecht, a rapporteur for the European Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee on the …

Following an internal review of government IT procurement, the Cabinet Office has announced that it has scrapped plans to use some existing ICT frameworks.
It has said that government departments will only be able to establish framework agreements in future if they can show it will "explicitly deliver against key strategic needs …

Organisations that wish to update their IT systems and transform their business need to be careful not to be overly prescriptive with suppliers and overlook other important considerations, an expert in resolving IT disputes has said.
Ian Birdsey of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that organisations often " …

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will meet representatives from local authorities to address what it has called an "underlying problem" with the bodies' approach to data protection.
The ICO made the announcement after it reported that it had served civil monetary penalty notices to four separate local authorities in …

Banks must remember regulatory compliance issues when interacting with customers via Twitter, says an expert.
Banks face regulatory risks when responding to customers through social media channels, a legal expert has said.
A new study by Virgin Media Business has revealed that 63 per cent of banks now respond to customer …

Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor of London Boris Johnson have unveiled plans to establish a £50 million "technical and creative institute" around the area dubbed the Silicon Roundabout at Old Street in London.
The plans, set out at a conference organised by LSE Cities, propose an architecture-designed scheme housing 200 …

Public sector organisations will be required to ensure that disabled users of their websites have the same access to certain content and services as other internet users by the end of 2015 under new European Commission proposals.
The Commission said that more than 100 million EU residents would benefit from the rules it has …

Data anonymisation does not have to provide a 100 per cent guarantee to individuals' privacy in order for it to be lawful for organisations to disclose the information, the UK's data protection watchdog has said.
The view of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), detailed in a new code of practice (108-page/2.15MB PDF) on …

Businesses that sell digital content to consumers should generally be responsible for providing refunds when services connected to that content fall below "quality standards" due to faults with the content, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said.
The UK's consumer protection regulator said that consumers should have a "right …